Nokia 3650: More features than you can shake a stick at & attention-grabbingly stylish
Written: Aug 09 '03 (Updated Jan 17 '04)
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Pros: Camera, downloadable apps, great editing, versatile phonebook, fun, light, good reception, huge screen
Cons: Low volume, circular key pad, only 3 languages in U.S. models
The Bottom Line: This phone looks so stylish that it's hard to believe it can also be as functional as it is, but it can do everything a mobile should and then some.
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| ngurevic's Full Review: Nokia 3650 |
INTRODUCTION
I have mobilitis, and I'm afraid it's terminal. I used to snicker at Johnny-cell phone walking around looking all-important talking on his little gadget. What, I don't have enough people bugging me at home that I should allow them access to me on the go? Well, all that changed as soon as I had first access to a cell phone: I bought a pay-as-you-go phone to use when in Greece (I go every year for about a month) and fell in love with text messages (SMS) because they’re easy and cheap: if I want to let my Belgian friend know that we’re going to Makis' taverna for dinner, instead of paying for an international call to her phone and her paying the roaming charges from Belgium to Greece I can just text her for about 4 cents.
Last year when returning from Greece I had separation anxiety from my Greek mobile (a GSM phone that does not work on the frequency we use here in the U.S.) so I got one from Cingular, which I had for a year (See my review of Cingular service in our area that will make you understand why it was worth it to pay their early termination fee so I can move on to T-mobile: http://www.epinions.com/content_108780752516). And then (insert heavenly music here) I moved on to the Nokia 3650, for free! I paid $300 at amazon.com, signed up with T-mobile, and will get all $300 back with rebates (half from T-mobile and half from amazon.com).
Free is a good price, but I believe this phone would still be worth it for the full price. This is the 3rd phone I've actually owned, and by now I know what I want from my phone. I am extremely satisfied with this product, and I will tell you why.
FEATURES & SPECS
General Features: The image of this phone should be on this epinion page, so you can see it has a big color screen (bigger than most phones), a rotary-style arrangement of the keypad, and a slightly wider build than most mobiles (5.1 x 2.2 x 1.0 in.). It is, however, extremely light (4.59 oz.) and rather sturdy. And It is stylish and sexy beyond belief (accessories include not only faceplates, but also cool colors for the keypad).
This phone is a tri-band GSM phone, which means it can communicate at 3 different frequencies (900/1800/1900 MHz) and therefore can be used in quite a few countries and not only in North America. This also means that I can text message my friends in Europe, and they can text me back (not so with any Cingular phone available in Illinois at present). I might mention here also that T-mobile is the only company I know of that does not charge extra for international messaging (I pay $2.99 for 500 SMS, and it does not matter whether they’re sent to/received from the next town or the next continent).
Keypad: The rotary style keypad is cute enough and allows for more navigational keys than non-rotary pads. However, it is difficult to get used to, especially when inputting text. I used to input text very quickly on my other mobiles because I remembered whereabouts each number key is in the normal type of keypad (that is, after a while it became easy to remember that to punch in the letter [n] I had to key-in [6] twice, and that this key is in the middle row at the right). But with a rotary arrangement you may be able to move your finger predictably to the beginning or end of the keypad, but not to the exact location of the key you require. It definitely slows down my text inputting, and because of the wideness of the phone also makes it a little difficult to do it one-handed (i.e., to hold the phone in one hand and use that hand’s thumb to input the text). I’m quite certain that this experiment of changing the keypad arrangement failed, and that future Nokia products will not revive it.
The 4-way navigational key is wide enough to use with any-size finger, but it seems a bit off (sometimes too touchy, sometimes not sensitive enough). The navigational part of this key (moving up/down and left/right) seems to work well enough, but when I press the key in to make a selection it often misunderstands my command as navigational. This is a bit annoying at times.
Camera: The Nokia 3650 has an integrated camera. This camera does not have a flash, but it takes pretty good pictures, and has several settings for size/quality of the image as well as shutter speed for night pictures. The pictures can then be stored in the phone's internal memory or the 15MB memory card included with this phone, and can be sent to other phones or computers (using the various types of messages or connections that this phone is capable of, see below) & used as wallpaper for your phone's screen and as images for contacts in the phonebook. You can also take 10 sec. movies, with sound (this used to be without sound, but Nokia released an update for the software and all new phones are shipped with this update; it can also be downloaded from Nokia's website).
Memory Card & Battery: 15 MB card is shipped with the phone. This is plenty of memory to download loads and loads of games and utilities, store movies and pictures, and back up all the data stored on the phone's internal memory.
The battery life is quite incredible in comparison to any phone I've used in the past. The first day the phone arrived I used about 40 minutes of talking time, I entered almost all the data I require into the phone book, I took pictures and movies, I played with every aspect of the phone that I could think of, and at the end of the day only 2 bars of the battery charge were used up. My Erickson T60d (the Cingular phone I had before this one) would have been tapped after that much use.
Sound: During a call you can change the volume by using the 4-way navigational key, but that is a bit difficult to do without looking at the screen, which means removing the phone from your ear. Most phones nowadays have side buttons that can be pushed during a call to adjust volume, and those are more convenient because you can adjust while listening to the call. This phone also has a loudspeaker, which you can select in the middle of a call if you so desire. However, the highest volume for any of the sounds the phone makes (loudspeaker, ringer, handset) is not really all that high.
This phone, obviously, allows polyphonic rings (most new phones do) but these are just not as piercingly loud as old-fashioned rings were, and I do periodically miss calls because I don't hear the phone ringing (but when I do hear it ring, I'm quite proud of my selection of the old batman theme as a ring-tone).
Connectivity: You can share data in your phone (or memory card), or receive new data, in several ways: you can send and receive files using MMS (multi-media messages) or email, you can download files directly from the web, or you can connect to your computer using either a parallel port or one of two wireless options: Bluetooth or infrared. I purchased an extremely cheap infrared USB adapter for my PC ($10 on ebay), and am now able to synchronize files between the phone, its memory card, and my computer. Infrared does tend to fail quite often, especially when backing up larger files, so if you find this feature important and aren't patient enough to restart the transfer process several times, you're better off paying about $50 for a Bluetooth adapter because this method of data transmission is infinitely more reliable. Infrared on the phone is still useful if you want to send information (e.g., a picture or contact information) directly to someone else's mobile that is also equipped with an infrared port.
Nokia allows you to download for free an application called PC Suite for your PC, which you can use to access your phone's files while it is connected to the PC. Do not underestimate the usefulness of backing up your phone's files!
Software: One of the best things about this phone is the fact that it can be updated with new applications. In addition to being able to download ring tones and images (something many new phones are capable of) you can also choose from a variety of Java or Symbian OS games, utilities, updates, and the like. I've downloaded a mapquest viewer (so I can now send an address out and receive a map directly on my phone, which I can zoom in and out of and pan around), several games, a web browser, and a utility that allows me to make longer movies than the 10 sec. ones the phone's software limits me to. You can find quite a few of these applications at handango.com.
This review is turning into too long a story so I will not go into all the various software that comes with the phone, but I will mention that (1) it has one of the most versatile phonebooks I've ever used, where you can add as much or as little information as you care to in each contact's listing, and you can even edit the headings of the various details; it also allows selecting more than one address to send the same message to; (2) this phone allows you to have more than one application open at the same time, so you can start composing a message, then switch to the camera to take a picture, answer an incoming phone call, and return to the message without losing any characters; (3) there is a plethora of shortcuts and tools, including some very handy editing tools (e.g., selecting text for cutting & pasting); and (4) it has PDA-style software like to-do lists, memos, and a calendar (although I don’t use these because I have a PDA).
The manual that comes with the phone is worth going over so that you can learn the various capabilities of this phone. Trust me, it can do so much that you're just not likely to figure it all out by yourself (and not because it's confusing, but because you would never imagine that a mobile phone can do some of these things, such as switching between applications, or allowing you to add to the dictionary used for predictive text-input).
The one software-related feature that upsets me is that the models shipped to the U.S. market only include English, Spanish and French as available languages. This means that when I go to Greece next summer I will not be able to send/receive SMS in Greek, and that just won't do. Apparently Nokia does not care about the U.S. market all that much. I tried to join club-nokia, but it is not available for U.S. customers. I tried to fill out their survey but received a message saying "sorry, we're only interested in customers living in the following countries" (where U.S. was not included).
BOTTOM LINE
Although Nokia seems to have a dismissive attitude toward the U.S. market, there is no sufficient language support in the models shipped to the U.S., and the rotary-style keypad is a bit of a failed experiment, this phone's capabilities are above and beyond what I expected, and its potential for expansion (memory cards, new software) as well as its functionality makes it a great mobile phone.
UPDATE AFTER EXTENDED USE (Jan 17, 2004)
Yes, I still LOVE my Nokia 3650, and even more now that I've been using it since August 03. Anything anyone's phone can do so can mine, and usually better (other than the walky-talky Nextel thing, although there's software that will turn mine into a similar device...). Here are some specifics: a friend signed on to T-mobile the same time I did but got one of the Samsung V200 series phones (a flip phone with the rotating camera). The photos on mine come out better, his doesn't have video, and the reception on my phone is infinitely better than his (there's places where he gets one bar and I have full reception, and we're on the same network so the difference must be in the phones). I have another friend with the ridiculously popular LG flip phone (I forget the model#, but it's really tiny) and again, my camera is better, my phone book is more versatile, and my reception is better (even though he's on Verizon--a company that offers more coverage than my T-mobile, at least for now). Best of all, mine is the only one that has the infrared port that allows me to (1) sync with my PC; and (2) connect with my palm and be used as a modem; So the bottom line after extended use and some comparing with friends is that my phone is still the king. It's good to be king.
Recommended:
Yes
Recommended for: World Travelers - Works Anywhere and Everywhere!
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Epinions.com ID:
ngurevic
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Member: Naomi Gurevich
Reviews written: 61
Trusted by: 26 members
About Me:
I finished my Doctorate (in Linguistics) and had a kid. now what?!
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